Broken
by Mr Sinister
Summary: Warren Worthington sits at Betsy Braddock's bedside after her mauling by Sabretooth...


Broken

**__**

Broken

My eyes are red and swollen. Or at least I'd imagine they are. I haven't seen my face in a mirror for close to twenty-four hours. Sleep comes in fits and starts, and never lasts long. Somebody – I think it was Jean, about four hours ago – has put a blanket round my hunched shoulders, in order to keep me warm while I sit here, holding a silent vigil by Betsy's side. I feel drained, the centre of my being ripped apart like a carcass in a slaughterhouse. Like Betsy. 

I see her lying in this bed, a tube inserted down her throat to help her breathe, and numerous dressings placed over her body to help heal the deep, vicious wounds that Sabretooth inflicted on her, and I just want to lash out at the world – to find some way to make the pain go away. She whimpers now and then as the pain gets to be too much for her, even through the sedatives and the anaesthetics. As she does so, the gashes in her stomach strain against the stitches, wanting to pop open and spill her insides all over the infirmary's tiled floor. In fact I think that a few yards of surgical twine is all that's holding her together right now. Her beautiful skin, coloured that wonderful shade of pink tinged with gold, is rent in so many places she resembles a beat-up pincushion. Her left eye is swollen closed – or would be if she weren't asleep right now. Her lips – the lips I've kissed countless times – are split and broken, thick dark scabs showing me with ugly clarity exactly where Victor Creed slapped her across the face with his claws, tearing her skin open as if it was tissue paper.

Creed. Just to hear his name makes me want to be violently sick.

We caught him. We five – the original X-Men. We caught him, but we didn't escape unscathed. My metal wings burn with the pain that he inflicted on me, and I can still feel the blood oozing from the broken edges of the feathers he snapped like twigs, soaking through the dressings that Hank put on them almost instantly. But that pain is like a minor irritation compared to what he put Betsy through. Her stomach was almost ripped in half – she was nearly eviscerated by that maniac. And he smiled through it. I heard Boomer telling Jean about it while I was on my way to the infirmary in a single breathless, traumatised sentence. How Creed grinned as he held her by the hair, how he held her up and raked his claws through her flesh as if it was straw, how he beat her to within an inch of her life and laughed while he did it. How he virtually murdered the woman I love.

_Oh, God, Betsy… don't leave me._

Behind me I hear somebody come in, and I turn my head listlessly to see who it is. Hank adjusts his glasses and lopes over to where I sit, Betsy's bandaged hand in my own. He lays his furry hand on my shoulder and says "Any change?" Rubbing my aching eyes, I shake my head.

"No," I tell him bleakly. "She's still…" My voice tails off. Hank nods sadly.

"I rather thought that would be the case," he says, checking Betsy's charts as he nears the bed, unrolling a couple of pristine white bandages and moving back the stiff white sheet that covers Betsy's mangled body. The wounds underneath the dressings are still ugly and raw – they look like bloody, wet lips vomiting her lifeblood out of her faster than she can replace it. I can see Hank's worry and consternation even through his thick blue fur, and when Hank is worried, everyone should be worried.

"What is it, Hank?"

"Warren I have to be honest with you – Betsy's prognosis is… not favourable. Her injuries are massive, both internally and externally, and –"

"She's going to die, isn't she?" I finish bitterly. "She's going to die and you won't be able to do a goddamn thing about it." Hank shakes his head and lays his big blue paw on my shoulder reassuringly.

"Now, my friend, I didn't say that. We're going to do everything we can to save her, do you hear me? If I have to crawl to the Shi'Ar Imperium itself and then all the way back again in order to find something that will help Betsy to get better, you may rest assured that I will do it without hesitation. For friends like you two, I can do no less." That brings a little smile to my haggard face for a moment or two.

"Thank you, Hank," I say. "That… means a lot. It really does." Hank nods and adjusts his half-moon glasses slightly, pushing them up his nose and blinking. 

"Don't thank me yet, Warren," he says, back in his realistic-scientist mode. "Thank me when you don't have to spend every waking moment in this infirmary. Thank me when the woman that you obviously love with everything that you have doesn't have to be kept hooked up to a heart monitor. Thank me then. Right now, we all have some more work to do." He pauses, and his face softens slightly. "Betsy should be fine until the morning, at which point we'll take it from there. I'll try and bring you some coffee when I return, all right?" He offers his big blue paw to me again, and I take it gratefully, embracing my old friend for a moment, until he gently disengages himself from me and says, "She'll be all right, Warren – I promise. For now, I'd try and get some sleep." He points to one of the other beds, which has been draped with a thick blanket and a plump pillow – evidence of Jean's presence again, I think. "Sleep, Warren. You'll do her no good staying awake and indulging yourself in self-recrimination and brooding."

"See you soon, Hank," I say, slipping my jacket off and flipping back the cover of the bed. "Good night."

"Good night, Warren. Sleep well."

I take my shoes off and strip down to my boxer shorts and the plain white T-shirt I had on underneath my cream-coloured Armani suit, folding the pants and jacket over the chair I had been sitting in before, and close my eyes. Just as I do so, however, Betsy convulses spasmodically, flushing all the fatigue from my body and causing me to sit up as fast as I can, rushing to her side to see what's wrong. Betsy thrashes, moaning, but I can't see whether anything's the matter with her. I stroke her forehead to see if she has a new fever, but she is still cold as ice. She mumbles "Warren…" through clenched lips, raising her bandaged right hand slightly.

"I'm here, sweetheart," I say softly, slipping my own hand into hers gently. She grips it as if it is her only lifeline. "I'm here. You're safe. Everything's going to be all right." 

"No… Warren, help me!" she mutters, her voice rising to a scream. "Help me!" Then it finally dawns on me what's happening. 

It's a bad dream. A dream that is affecting her even through the sleep the drugs are giving her, which means it must be so terrible that not even Betsy's formidable strength is enough to force it down. She whimpers like a kitten as the dream ends, mercifully sparing her further pain. She has coughed up some bright red blood despite the tube in her throat, and I use my blue silk pocket handkerchief to wipe it away gently, erasing the scarlet flecks on her chin with a few deft strokes of my hand. Her breath comes in raw, noisy wheezes for a few moments and then settles down again, reminding me of how delicate her hold on life is at this point. 

"She ain't gonna last a week, kid," says a gruff voice behind me. "She's got the stink o' death on her already. It ain't pretty." My eyes narrow as I realise just who has joined me.

"Go away, Logan. I'm not in the mood for your pessimism right now." The little man moves closer to me and grabs my shoulder so that I am forced to turn to look at him, and shoves a pointed index finger in my face.

"Shut up, rich boy, and listen. You don't want to trust my senses, fine – I don't care one way or the other. But you look at her with your own eyes, and what do you see?" I take a deep breath. He has a point.

"I see a very sick woman," I say, finally. "But Hank says she's going to get better." Logan shakes his head sadly.

"Hank's a good guy, but he's wrong. She's too far-gone. I've seen it before and I'll see it again before I go to my grave, that's for damn sure. Creed does things for keeps, and he wanted to kill Betsy – I can still smell that in the Danger Room. He wanted to spread her guts all over the walls and make her pay for all our mistakes." His lip twists contemptuously. "All o' Chuck's mistakes."

Folding my arms across my chest, I look at the sawn-off little man and raise an eyebrow. "Why are you here, Logan? What is it you want? If you haven't anything else to say then I'd appreciate being left alone –"

"I told you to shut up once, Wings, an' I meant it. Don't think you got sole claim to Betsy, boy – I've been linked to her too, an' I know how she thinks, how she feels, how she works. I love that kid as much as you do, an' I'll be damned if I see her die because I didn't do what I had to do the first time around. I ain't gonna let her down again." He growls deep in his throat at that, his visceral rage burning in his eyes. "Boomer told me what Creed said – how it was me that made Creed immune to his 'glow'. That makes this just as much my fault as his. That's what made me come down here. You need help, kid, an' that means I'm your man."

I sigh, and throw my hands up in the air. "All right. Let's say I _do_ need your help. What can you do to help Betsy get better?" Logan's rough face splits into an uncharacteristic grin.

"It's called the Crimson Dawn, kid. Now get dressed – we gotta go to Chinatown…"


End file.
